Jim Rogers & The Baller Farmers

Look, I tend to agree with Jim on nearly everything.
But he's always saying how Finance types will be driving taxi cabs and farmers will be rich: This seems very puzzling.

I agree with a rally in commodities, however, smart "finance types" can make fortunes off a rise in the commodity prices, just like farmers. His only explicit argument is that "there are times in history where the financial types have the upper hand and times where those who produce do".

but at the end of the day, spot markets have to exist for the agriproducts, and futures have to exist for the farmers to hedge: as long as markets exist "financial types" can trade the markets and make fortunes. (unless perhaps worldwide financial regulation, but wouldnt that stiffel the farmers fortunes by having an inefficient markets, etc)

Can someone explain how his prediction could work?

 

No, I think we're going to see an increase in statism over the next twenty or thirty years. In particular, states are going to pass laws increasing property taxes on absent or large-scale landowners.

Let's be clear about a few things:

1.) A lot of farmers will go from rural lower-middle-class poverty on 100-300 acre farms to clearly middle class. 2.) A lot of people thinking they'll get rich will get clobbered by state real estate taxes and limitations on large farms or out-of-state ownership. 3.) Some control on grain export- to jack up the cost of foreign labor and/or encourage a little civil unrest among our economic rivals- is in the US's rational self-interest.

The US produces 1/3 of the world's grain. We're not a military and industrial power because of capitalism; we're a military and industrial power because (A) the median person in this country has a lot of civil and economic liberties and (B) we're not subject to the same famines that Asia, South America, and much of the world are subject to.

We need to get together with the UK, Canada, and Australia and form an OPEC for grain. And then when a bunch of unhappy, hungry people in China shut down the factories and eliminate China's ability to pursue mercantilism, US workers will be able to demand- and get- $40/hour in a capitalist system.

It would be really nice if this didn't happen to China, but it MUST happen for the US to remain an economic and military power; to ensure that libertarianism and democracy prevail over China's authoritarian government, to reduce the environmental damage being done by population overshoot in other countries, and to give the median person in this country a big stake in capitalism.

We can't let China's and India's pending food shortages harm the US- or at least the 85% of the people in the US who want to work.

 
trazer985:
i'd agree with him, if the bankers hadnt bought the farmland :P
See, that's where middle-class midwestern voters come in.

We're going to have a two-tier property tax system for agricultural famland- 1% for resident farmers owning up to 640 acres, 2.5% for non-residents and for acreage over 640 acres.

We're thrilled bankers get to participate in higher grain prices. We're just going to make sure the material portion of the benefits go to the middle-class in Illinois.

But actually, most of the farmland in the Midwest is still owned by resident farmers.

 
IlliniProgrammer:
We're going to have a two-tier property tax system for agricultural famland- 1% for resident farmers owning up to 640 acres, 2.5% for non-residents and for acreage over 640 acres.
Is this an actual proposal or just something you hope will happen? In my experience, people who romanticize family farming have generally never worked on a farm before. It's brutal work.
 

I really find it hard to believe that actual farmers would want to see extra taxes levied on people who are trying to buy farmland that they own...that doesnt seem to make a whole lot of sense to me. I know if I owned a farm I would definitely be voting a big "no" to that one.

I also think the idea to have the state government hire people to attempt to manipulate commodity markets to the benefit of the state treasury is truly a recipe for disaster...even aside from the obvious moral issues, the mechanics of such a thing would be much harder then you think. What happens the first time the state of illinois gets run over in a bad position and blows the state budget for the year (which would happen from time to time even if they were trading ahead of govt released data and stuff like that)? They can do this is super rich countries that have big sovereign wealth funds and that dont have transparency or a democratic process, but in a state like Illinois I really cant see the public having appetite to gamble the state budget in commodity markets even with a possible edge. I do like that you would volunteer but I am also somewhat skeptical that any actual trader with any real experience who would know what they are doing would go live a middle-class lifestyle in order to selflessly help the state of illinois.

 
Bondarb:
I really find it hard to believe that actual farmers would want to see extra taxes levied on people who are trying to buy farmland that they own...that doesnt seem to make a whole lot of sense to me. I know if I owned a farm I would definitely be voting a big "no" to that one.

I also think the idea to have the state government hire people to attempt to manipulate commodity markets to the benefit of the state treasury is truly a recipe for disaster...even aside from the obvious moral issues, the mechanics of such a thing would be much harder then you think. What happens the first time the state of illinois gets run over in a bad position and blows the state budget for the year (which would happen from time to time even if they were trading ahead of govt released data and stuff like that)? They can do this is super rich countries that have big sovereign wealth funds and that dont have transparency or a democratic process, but in a state like Illinois I really cant see the public having appetite to gamble the state budget in commodity markets even with a possible edge. I do like that you would volunteer but I am also somewhat skeptical that any actual trader with any real experience who would know what they are doing would go live a middle-class lifestyle in order to selflessly help the state of illinois.

Agreed, the notion that the state of Illinois could trade on its information edge is absurd. I have heard that the USSR/Russia did this, because they had their own commodity production and information from the KGB, but do you really think this could happen in the United States? Citizens are already up in arms whenever they hear anything related to "derivatives", "speculation", "proprietary trading", etc. So after this, is the Oklahoma government going to start prop trading the CL? Louisiana and Pennsylvania playing around in NG? Is the Federal Reserve going to collaborate with the BLS to front run payrolls? I guess we don't have to worry about the deficit anymore. IllinoisProgrammer, for such a frugal guy, you certainly aren't skimping when it comes to the ganja.

 

IP, when will you decide if you are a financier or a farmer, you cannot keep working for banks building algos if you believe the farmers come out on top.

As for Rogers point, he is not saying to go become a farmer tomorrow. He is simply saying we are trending into a future where tangible products will have more value over intangibles and he has been very correct in his call on this trend over the last 10-15 years and continues to be.

Lastly, its not as easy as said "oh we will just buy the farmer's land!" Already explained in the thread on physical trading and physical assets it is a much different landscape than saying trading rates, there is no book out there to get you started and timeframe/capital/experience curves are way different.

 
I really find it hard to believe that actual farmers would want to see extra taxes levied on people who are trying to buy farmland that they own...that doesnt seem to make a whole lot of sense to me. I know if I owned a farm I would definitely be voting a big "no" to that one...I am also somewhat skeptical that any actual trader with any real experience who would know what they are doing would go live a middle-class lifestyle in order to selflessly help the state of Illinois.

Bondarb, Next time you claim Illinois farmers would swing an election against this, maybe do some research first. Fact is that 2/3 of Illinois lives in the Chicago suburbs and UIUC alumns alone (not to mention the dozens of other state college alumns) outnumber Illinois farmers (75,000 farms in Illinois as of 2010.

The point is that a state should try to keep as much resources in the state as possible. It is ok for a state to pick winners and losers- so long as it ensures that its choices on the winners and losers reduce gini coefficients. A tax on out-of-state farm ownership could be used to pay off pension debt or fund a stronger state post-secondary education system.

 

The fact remains as Bondarb explained a proudcer/originator of a resource should never actively speculate solely based on their position, every time this happened we have seen the examples written in books like Hull. A producer or creator of a resource should solely be looking to hedge to the best of their ability, but it becomes a whole different ballgame when you actively think you could speculate on that information. You cannot allow the guy saying to put on the 1 to 5 trades and the dude saying we need to hold these resources to feed our people for the next 50 years to be the same reason making the same calls. You have a very harsh conflict of interest and it always ends in disaster.

This is why any physical trading shop who truly trades or speculates is usually given a solely different mandate then the producer arm and a huge ass chinese wall to separate the two. Let the farmer/engineer/miner do what they do best, let the trader/speculator do what they do best. If the farmer/engineer/miner needs advice or to price an option let the trader do that.

A speculator is always trading especially in the physical world on non-perfect information, so you as the state may think i have 100% information, I am front running the market, I know the core I will buy on XYZ trade because it has a 80% risk profile. But then weather could turn, something globally could break down, a new form of technologically could cause your cost curves to change, then boom the pain arrives. There is no such thing as insider trading in physical markets like there is in equities.

 
marcellus_wallace:
The fact remains as Bondarb explained a proudcer/originator of a resource should never actively speculate solely based on their position, every time this happened we have seen the examples written in books like Hull. A producer or creator of a resource should solely be looking to hedge to the best of their ability, but it becomes a whole different ballgame when you actively think you could speculate on that information. You cannot allow the guy saying to put on the 1 to 5 trades and the dude saying we need to hold these resources to feed our people for the next 50 years to be the same reason making the same calls. You have a very harsh conflict of interest and it always ends in disaster.

This is why any physical trading shop who truly trades or speculates is usually given a solely different mandate then the producer arm and a huge ass chinese wall to separate the two. Let the farmer/engineer/miner do what they do best, let the trader/speculator do what they do best. If the farmer/engineer/miner needs advice or to price an option let the trader do that.

A speculator is always trading especially in the physical world on non-perfect information, so you as the state may think i have 100% information, I am front running the market, I know the core I will buy on XYZ trade because it has a 80% risk profile. But then weather could turn, something globally could break down, a new form of technologically could cause your cost curves to change, then boom the pain arrives. There is no such thing as insider trading in physical markets like there is in equities.

Sure Marcellus. But the state isn't a producer. It's simply a regulator. In some ways, it can fill the same role as Enron did with respect to California, except for the fact that it has sovereign regulatory immunity. So would Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, etc.

Illinois, for example, has the regulatory authority to create a lot of issues with grain shipments through the state. Of course, there's not much New York would be able to do about it- it's not like you can just stop consuming grain. So those would be two ways that Illinois could extract economic rents from investors and speculators from outside the state.

 
IlliniProgrammer:
marcellus_wallace:
The fact remains as Bondarb explained a proudcer/originator of a resource should never actively speculate solely based on their position, every time this happened we have seen the examples written in books like Hull. A producer or creator of a resource should solely be looking to hedge to the best of their ability, but it becomes a whole different ballgame when you actively think you could speculate on that information. You cannot allow the guy saying to put on the 1 to 5 trades and the dude saying we need to hold these resources to feed our people for the next 50 years to be the same reason making the same calls. You have a very harsh conflict of interest and it always ends in disaster.

This is why any physical trading shop who truly trades or speculates is usually given a solely different mandate then the producer arm and a huge ass chinese wall to separate the two. Let the farmer/engineer/miner do what they do best, let the trader/speculator do what they do best. If the farmer/engineer/miner needs advice or to price an option let the trader do that.

A speculator is always trading especially in the physical world on non-perfect information, so you as the state may think i have 100% information, I am front running the market, I know the core I will buy on XYZ trade because it has a 80% risk profile. But then weather could turn, something globally could break down, a new form of technologically could cause your cost curves to change, then boom the pain arrives. There is no such thing as insider trading in physical markets like there is in equities.

Sure Marcellus. But the state isn't a producer. It's simply a regulator. In some ways, it can fill the same role as Enron did with respect to California, except for the fact that it has sovereign regulatory immunity. So would Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, etc.

Illinois, for example, has the regulatory authority to create a lot of issues with grain shipments through the state. Of course, there's not much New York would be able to do about it- it's not like you can just stop consuming grain. So those would be two ways that Illinois could extract economic rents from investors and speculators from outside the state.

So the state of illinois would create problems with grain shipments in the state and have a trading desk that trdaes based on the timing of these disruptions? You seriously think this is a good way for the state to extract income? Do you really think this is a realistic idea that the voters of the state would support? To me it sounds like a great way to destroy a thriving industry.

 

Dude, physical players will be out of Illinois in a second if the state doesn't compensate them for logistical grief. There would also be a massive risk premium on Illinois grain and the subsidies you would have to pay your farmers would eat up anything you can possibly make on your State-sponsored "insider trading" venture. And if you think the Feds will fund those subsidies, you're out of your mind. This thing would get squashed in the Supreme Court in a hot minute.

 

Not really Bondarb. People on the east coast need to eat. And the grain that isn't produced in Illinois often has to go through it. If a few other midwestern states start doing this, we can really start forcing grain prices up to $15, maybe $20/bushel given the inelastic nature of the product.

If Texas could do it to California, Illinois can do it to New York.

 
IlliniProgrammer:
Not really Bondarb. People on the east coast need to eat. And the grain that isn't produced in Illinois often has to go through it. If a few other midwestern states start doing this, we can really start forcing grain prices up to $15, maybe $20/bushel given the inelastic nature of the product.

If Texas could do it to California, Illinois can do it to New York.

...a private business operating an illegal cartel that harms consumers is somewhat different then a state government in a democratic country that has at least the veneer of the rule of law doing the same. Let us remember that ken lay died in prison over enron...so it is somewhat disturbing to see people on message boards volunteering to participate in a similar scheme provided that the crime hurts the rich more then the poor (altho driving up food prices is way worse for the poor then the rich) and that the crime is committed on behalf of the state. I would also say that the sole beneficiaries of this ridiculous plan, in the fantasy World where it could be enacted, would be the states that decided not to attempt it and any of the many foreign countries that produce grain and allow unfettered access to it.

 
Bondarb:
...a private business operating an illegal cartel that harms consumers is somewhat different then a state government in a democratic country that has at least the veneer of the rule of law doing the same. Let us remember that ken lay died in prison over enron...so it is somewhat disturbing to see people on message boards volunteering to participate in a similar scheme provided that the crime hurts the rich more then the poor (altho driving up food prices is way worse for the poor then the rich) and that the crime is committed on behalf of the state. I would also say that the sole beneficiaries of this ridiculous plan, in the fantasy World where it could be enacted, would be the states that decided not to attempt it and any of the many foreign countries that produce grain and allow unfettered access to it.
Bondarb it would only be subject to Illinois criminal law and therefore be completely legal if that was what the state's residents really wanted. Not to mention the fact that grain is not subject to the securities and exchange acts. If you don't know what you're talking about, don't be so foolish as to accuse others of not knowing what they're talking about. This is the second time you've made a facepalm worthy factual mistakes in this thread, and yet you continue to throw ad-hominems at me. Fairly typical behavior for unhappy, and apparently now also clueless Bondarb.

If OPEC can do it, if the Texas Railroad Commission can do it, and if Illinois residents get annoyed enough, Illinois will too.

Not only would that murder farmers (so there's some more subsidies you have to dish out), it would make it virtually impossible to trade, including for your "insiders." What would end up happening is that the futures market would end up completely ignoring Illinois outside of situations of extremely tight supply. And as for an OTC market, there isn't a clown in the world who would take the other side.
GoodBread, the assumptions stated at the top of this exercise are that investors and speculators are making all of the money off of the farmland anyways. So there would be no subsidies required, because all of the wealth at stake is held by outsiders in the first place.
 

And you also have to look at the instruments used. If you're thinking futures, you have to take into account how large and volatile the basis between Illinois grain and futures would get. Not only would that murder farmers (so there's some more subsidies you have to dish out), it would make it virtually impossible to trade, including for your "insiders." What would end up happening is that the futures market would end up completely ignoring Illinois outside of situations of extremely tight supply. And as for an OTC market, there isn't a clown in the world who would take the other side.

 
GoodBread:
And you also have to look at the instruments used. If you're thinking futures, you have to take into account how large and volatile the basis between Illinois grain and futures would get. Not only would that murder farmers (so there's some more subsidies you have to dish out), it would make it virtually impossible to trade, including for your "insiders." What would end up happening is that the futures market would end up completely ignoring Illinois outside of situations of extremely tight supply. And as for an OTC market, there isn't a clown in the world who would take the other side.

anyone who has ever actually executed a trade in soft commodity markets understands the absurdity of the idea...IP does not fall into this category unfortunately. At the end of the day farmers would get killed (both as you describe above and business-wise as people bought grain elsewhere instead of Illinois) and the state taxpayers would inevitably get jammed into a big position in a super-illiquid market and lose their shirt as well. Winners would be other grain producers outside Illinois and speculators who caught the other side when this fund blows up.

 

It would take many, many years for Illinois to regain market confidence and get back into the ag supply chain. Are you telling me voters in Illinois are somehow different from all the others in the country and operate on a 10+ year time frame? Not to mention that once the Supreme Court shuts you down, the specs will be back. In fact, they would probably stick around until you get shut down without even selling in the first place.

 
GoodBread:
It would take many, many years for Illinois to regain market confidence and get back into the ag supply chain. Are you telling me voters in Illinois are somehow different from all the others in the country and operate on a 10+ year time frame? Not to mention that once the Supreme Court shuts you down, the specs will be back. In fact, they would probably stick around until you get shut down without even selling in the first place.
All Illinois needs to do is get the grain into Indiana for it to be as valuable as grain grown elsewhere.

The SCOTUS gives broad powers to states to control the economy in their own states. This has been fairly well established (CC West Coast Hotel v. Parrish) and is part of the basis for federalism.

We start this on the state level and then we need to move it to other states and eventually to the federal level.

The only way to preserve civil rights and liberties, which are dramatically more important than economic liberties, is to preserve the middle-class. The only way to preserve the middle-class is to have an activist federal government when it comes to reducing Gini indices without actually doing things that can be termed wealth transfers to the poor, which conservatives have strung up as some bogeyman. Therefore, the alternative is to make changes in tax and economic policy that happen to be disastrous for the rich- and utterly unavoidable to them- so we can therefore unlock that wealth for the middle-class.

The US produces 1/3 of the world's food and is now producing as much energy as it consumes. The question is who do we want to actually own the rights to receive income from resource production. Do we want foreign investors to own it? Or do we want to give the middle-class an unfair advantage when it comes to resource investment and then extract economic rents from the rest of the world for the resources we export? OPEC has been doing it for four decades and China is doing it on their monopoly- rare earth elements. Let's do it on our monopoly-- FOOD. Thank God we have a monopoly on the world's most important commodity.

 

The US has used the food weapon before and it didn't do much good. Setting aside the fact that such a state-sponsored plan is basically guaranteed to lead to widespread corruption and malinvestment (think China), you need to do a sanity check on what this will achieve for the middle class. Farmers are a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the middle and upper classes. This plan will not move the needle to help the middle class in any way. It will raise food prices on them and they'll vote you out. Furthermore, the OPEC comparisons are ridiculous. Oil is a vastly bigger market than grains and it is starting to slip out of OPEC's hands. Even if the U.S. were to set up a wheat board (in contrast to every other country where farmers hate them and had them abolished), they would be wielding a much weaker stick than you think. Just look at the record of PL480 loans. And if your plan is to make the middle class subsistence farmers, you're not helping the middle class. You're making it as poor as it was the day before the steam machine was invented.

 
GoodBread:
And if your plan is to make the middle class subsistence farmers, you're not helping the middle class. You're making it as poor as it was the day before the steam machine was invented.
We're making them financially independent.

When $30/bushel grain hits, the subsistence farmers will be the fortunate ones among us. I mean, if this is what the financial establishment really wants to happen to the country- for grain to go to $30/bushel, for the vast majority of Americans, including the people who actually work on the farms- to go hungry, we really do deserve to go communist and have them line up the guillotines on Wall Street. My solution at least gives us a modicum of hope for free market capitalism and distributes the economic power a bit more traditionally.

I don't think we will have a system of "subsistence farming"; farming has always been a capital-intensive middle-class profession. And subsistence farming prior to modern agriculture was about two acres per family member on a diet of chicken and a little beef- everything else produced was surplus. Even if we did have to resort to subsistence farming, it would still be would be preferable to the alternative that's guaranteed if $30/bushel hits.

Me personally? I really like my neck. I don't want to go down this road. Therefore, since "wealth redistribution" is out of the question, we need an indirect way of redistributing the wealth. We must therefore have laws that unfairly target the rich, particularly foreign owners of domestic resources, since the US is a net exporter of grain and can produce as much energy as it consumes, and not "redistribute" the wealth but rather let the middle-class and poor "earn" it fairly easily.

You may think this is awful, but it's an inevitability. I said higher taxes were an inevitability two years ago, to the dismay of GoodBread, Bondarb, and many others. Now Boehner is conceding on a millionaire tax. The next step is to limit the extraction of economic rents on resources in ways that increase Gini coefficients. The speculative land rush is one of them.

 
IlliniProgrammer:
GoodBread:
And if your plan is to make the middle class subsistence farmers, you're not helping the middle class. You're making it as poor as it was the day before the steam machine was invented.
We're making them financially independent.

When $30/bushel grain hits, the subsistence farmers will be the fortunate ones among us. I mean, if this is what the financial establishment really wants to happen to the country- for grain to go to $30/bushel, for the vast majority of Americans, including the people who actually work on the farms- to go hungry, we really do deserve to go communist and have them line up the guillotines on Wall Street. My solution at least gives us a modicum of hope for free market capitalism and distributes the economic power a bit more traditionally.

I don't think we will have a system of "subsistence farming"; farming has always been a capital-intensive middle-class profession. And subsistence farming prior to modern agriculture was about two acres per family member on a diet of chicken and a little beef- everything else produced was surplus. Even if we did have to resort to subsistence farming, it would still be would be preferable to the alternative that's guaranteed if $30/bushel hits.

Me personally? I really like my neck. I don't want to go down this road. Therefore, since "wealth redistribution" is out of the question, we need an indirect way of redistributing the wealth. We must therefore have laws that unfairly target the rich, particularly foreign owners of domestic resources, since the US is a net exporter of grain and can produce as much energy as it consumes, and not "redistribute" the wealth but rather let the middle-class and poor "earn" it fairly easily.

You may think this is awful, but it's an inevitability. I said higher taxes were an inevitability two years ago, to the dismay of GoodBread, Bondarb, and many others. Now Boehner is conceding on a millionaire tax. The next step is to limit the extraction of economic rents on resources in ways that increase Gini coefficients. The speculative land rush is one of them.

you obviously dont read my posts if you think i dont support taxation to pay for the massive expansion of government we have had over the last decades, in fact I think the ability of the US govt to borrow and print to pay for itself is a major cause of the growth of the state which I oppose...if people dont know that they have to pay for government and war they will invariably prefer to consumer more of both. But what we are about to see in terms of tax increases is a laughable increase in the top marginal rate back to 37.5% still below what prevailed just more then a decade ago. You on this board have advocated things like massive tax increases, expropriation of all wealth above certain thresholds, and in this thread some kind of government-led insider trading scheme of your own imagination. I dont mind discussing these things as it can be fun to kick around crazy ideas, however please dont try to say that any of what you are talking about is even close to reality...we are currently having trouble even wrangling a slight tax increase on top earners thru congress and we are certainly far away from the fantasy-stuff you regularly write about here.

And where do you get the notion that massive increases in the price of wheat are somehow a given? Your whole post seems to pre-suppose that wheat is going to rise in price massively...on what basis do you make this prediction? As someone who seems obsessed with frugality and money, why dont you just buy some wheat futures and be done with it?

 
And where do you get the notion that massive increases in the price of wheat are somehow a given? Your whole post seems to pre-suppose that wheat is going to rise in price massively...on what basis do you make this prediction? As someone who seems obsessed with frugality and money, why dont you just buy some wheat futures and be done with it?
I'm saying that assuming the OP is correct- that grain prices are going to the moon and the profits will be confined to a group of New York speculators, that essentially means the poor and middle class will starve. Therefore, there's a very simple response if that's the case.

Can you post a link to where I have advocated for the expropriation of vast sums of wealth? I've said it could happen. I don't think I remember advocating for it.

I dont mind discussing these things as it can be fun to kick around crazy ideas, however please dont try to say that any of what you are talking about is even close to reality...we are currently having trouble even wrangling a slight tax increase on top earners thru congress and we are certainly far away from the fantasy-stuff you regularly write about here.
The beauty of this stuff is that it can be done in liberal Illinois and Minnesota without any input or say whatsoever from the federal government. And for the record, I'm not a liberal. I'm actually a conservative. I simply believe in the US making use of its own natural resources to put our competitors at an economic and military disadvantage. Not unlike what the UAE and China have been trying to do to the US for the past thirty years.

And the real problem with government sponsored redistribution is that it gives a bunch of east coast politicians too much control and too much power. If we want genuine, fair wealth redistribution, the best way to do that is to simply put the wealthy at a huge economic disadvantage and let the chips fall how they may. Don't raise income taxes on them; raise their property tax- have the qualification for "rich" be as simple and difficult to avoid as possible- and encourage them to transfer assets to people who have less wealth.

In other words, the fire sale GoodBread was talking about above is exactly what we need. If Illinois farmland is going for $500/acre because the property taxes on it are $100/year if you own more than 320 acres, it suddenly becomes very easy for a middle-class family to take out a second mortgage and buy 320 acres of land that produces the same crop as land worth $1.6 million in another state for a mere $160K.

Sure, there are ways to get around this. People have kids and nephews that they can transfer land to. And some land is more productive than other land. But that only goes so far, and it only helps the marginally wealthy, not the truly rich.

 

I've always claimed tax rises were inevitable, I'm the last person who would be dismayed at that. But this plan here is awfully far from reality. Your plan to make markets freer is by manipulating them which is a faulty premises from the start. For your plan to actually work, you'll have to go across state lines because the market will simply ignore Illinois should it go down this road. This will trigger federal action before your hated speculators get frustrated enough to sell. And even if land prices do crash, they'll skyrocket the moment Illinois stops disrupting supply, something Illinois will have to do if it wants middle-class farmers to succeed.

The only thing you could conceivably do would be to means-test people who want to buy farms and set a cutoff beyond which you're not allowed to buy a farm. A perfectly free market right?

 
GoodBread:
I've always claimed tax rises were inevitable, I'm the last person who would be dismayed at that. But this plan here is awfully far from reality. Your plan to make markets freer is by manipulating them which is a faulty premises from the start.
My plan has never been to make makrets freer. My plan is to make the median individual freer.
For your plan to actually work, you'll have to go across state lines because the market will simply ignore Illinois should it go down this road.
No, the market will leave a big gaping hole in Illinois and have to figure out how to get AROUND the state. More importantly, if the market has to ignore Illinois in a highly inelastic commodity like grain- even moreso than oil- grain prices will skyrocket.
This will trigger federal action before your hated speculators get frustrated enough to sell. And even if land prices do crash, they'll skyrocket the moment Illinois stops disrupting supply, something Illinois will have to do if it wants middle-class farmers to succeed.
There you go. Illinois can stop disrupting supply once the land is in the hands of middle-class families. It would be great if land prices skyrocketed immediately, but I'm not counting on that.
The only thing you could conceivably do would be to means-test people who want to buy farms and set a cutoff beyond which you're not allowed to buy a farm. A perfectly free market right?
No. I don't want a free market. I want to maximize individual freedom. That was what the country did from the '30s to the '70s and it worked out pretty well compared to what Jim Rogers thinks we're facing.
 
Best Response

IP, I normally like your posts, but you are taking this a bit far. Who exactly are these middle class people that you are trying to help? The farmers? As you mentioned above there aren't that many of them left. What you are suggesting will have negative short term impacts to farmers, small and large. Do you think that farmers want to take on short term sacrifice to help out middle class people in the Chicago burbs? If that's the case, you need to spend more time getting to know people South of I-80. Also, farmers have a very interesting relationship/view on the govt. - they are willing to accept subsidies but don't normally want to hand over any more power to the government or do anything to raise taxes. You are talking about ceding an entirely different of level of control to the state govt.

You are talking like the farm production in IL is the state's asset. It isn't. It is an asset of the farmers (or corporations) that own the land. Farmers are concerned with helping themselves, their communities and preserving their way of life. They don't really have any interest in helping to create more equality for middle class people living in urban centers, which is where most of them are.

P.S. My authority on all farm related subjects comes from the fact that I was raised as a central IL farm kid and nearly my entire immediate and extended family are active farmers. If you think you know differently about farm people and weren't working the barns at 5:30am every day before school, you can get on your John Deere and gtfo.

 

Amet similique et eaque est natus quasi. Quo sed autem et magnam consectetur impedit. Tempora et consequatur modi eum suscipit adipisci doloremque fugiat. Atque possimus nemo maiores harum et. Modi sit numquam accusamus consequatur.

Career Advancement Opportunities

March 2024 Investment Banking

  • Jefferies & Company 02 99.4%
  • Goldman Sachs 19 98.8%
  • Harris Williams & Co. (++) 98.3%
  • Lazard Freres 02 97.7%
  • JPMorgan Chase 03 97.1%

Overall Employee Satisfaction

March 2024 Investment Banking

  • Harris Williams & Co. 18 99.4%
  • JPMorgan Chase 10 98.8%
  • Lazard Freres 05 98.3%
  • Morgan Stanley 07 97.7%
  • William Blair 03 97.1%

Professional Growth Opportunities

March 2024 Investment Banking

  • Lazard Freres 01 99.4%
  • Jefferies & Company 02 98.8%
  • Goldman Sachs 17 98.3%
  • Moelis & Company 07 97.7%
  • JPMorgan Chase 05 97.1%

Total Avg Compensation

March 2024 Investment Banking

  • Director/MD (5) $648
  • Vice President (19) $385
  • Associates (86) $261
  • 3rd+ Year Analyst (13) $181
  • Intern/Summer Associate (33) $170
  • 2nd Year Analyst (66) $168
  • 1st Year Analyst (202) $159
  • Intern/Summer Analyst (144) $101
notes
16 IB Interviews Notes

“... there’s no excuse to not take advantage of the resources out there available to you. Best value for your $ are the...”

Leaderboard

1
redever's picture
redever
99.2
2
Secyh62's picture
Secyh62
99.0
3
Betsy Massar's picture
Betsy Massar
99.0
4
BankonBanking's picture
BankonBanking
99.0
5
kanon's picture
kanon
98.9
6
CompBanker's picture
CompBanker
98.9
7
dosk17's picture
dosk17
98.9
8
DrApeman's picture
DrApeman
98.9
9
GameTheory's picture
GameTheory
98.9
10
bolo up's picture
bolo up
98.8
success
From 10 rejections to 1 dream investment banking internship

“... I believe it was the single biggest reason why I ended up with an offer...”